London’s East End:
Immigration and Development
Tour of Spitalfields and Brick Lane
February 2012
Dr Farhang Morady & Dr Patrick Burke
London: East End
• Covers the districts to the east and
outside the medieval (5th-15th
centuries) walled City of London; north
of the Thames
• Grew out of villages clustered around
City walls, marshes and Thames
• Defensive wall: built by Romans around
London; retained until 18th century.
• East End includes Whitechapel,
Stepney, Shoreditch, Tower Hamlets
and Hackney
Roman Wall in Tower Hill
East End: brief history
• Immigrants since 17th century have included: French Protestants
(Huguenots); Irish weavers; Ashkenazi Jews; Bangladeshis; Somalis
• Immigrants worked in: clothing industry; traded; money lending.
• Low wages and poor conditions led to protest
• Social reformers and revolutionaries active in East End from mid18th century
• An important place for formation of Unions and workers
associations
• Area developed rapidly in the 19th century
• Inhabitants provided services for the Royal Navy
• Construction of docks of 1799—1815
• Rural population came looking for employment
• East End political radicalism contributed to the formation of the
Labour Party.
Spitalfields: the beginning
• ‘Spitalfields’: name
derives from that of a
medieval hospital on this
site, ‘The priory of St.
Mary of the Spittle’.
• Relatively rural area until
the Great Fire of London
(1666)
• Late 17th century: slowly
becoming a suburb of
London
Old Spitalfields Market
Old Spitalfields Market
• 1682 – King Charles II grants
John Balch a Royal Charter to
hold a market on Thursdays and
Saturdays in Spital Square
• This encourages more people to
move to and settle in the area
• Today’s building constructed in
1880s
Huguenots: ‘asylum seekers’
and labour migrants
• 1670--1710: Huguenots –
members of the Protestant
Reformed Church of France –
arrive in England
• Fleeing religious persecution
in France: ‘asylum seekers’
• Some 25,000 came to
London; many of these to
Spitalfields
• Also fled to Wales,
Ireland, Denmark,
Switzerland,etc
•
•
Brought with them silkweaving skills;
Silk industry thrived:
Spitalfields became
known as ‘weaver town’
Christ Church Spitalfields
• By 1700: nine Huguenot churches in
Spitalfields
• Fears about the large numbers of religious
‘non-conformists’, including Huguenots in
the area
• 12 new Church of England churches built to
combat non-conformism
• Stipulated that they must have tall spires –
to rise above non-conformist chapels!
• Christ Church Spitalfields one of these:
built by Nicholas Hawksmoor
Fournier Street
• Houses built mainly in 1720s
• Built for Huguenot master silkweavers and mercers (textile
merchants)
• One of the best preserved
collections of early Georgian
town-houses in Britain
Irish labour migration
• From 1730: Irish weavers arrive
to work in silk trade
• Long working hours for little
money forced them to organize
illegal trade unions
• Frequent riots and other
protests against wages and
working conditions
• 1769: Spitalfields Riots: soldiers
try to arrest an entire meeting
of weavers; meet resistance;
fire on weavers
– Two men hanged, one Irish;
one Huguenot
Jewish immigration:
seeking work and asylum
• 1881—1914: over 2 million Jews flee
economic hardship and brutal
persecution in Russia and Eastern
Europe.
• 120,000 come to England; many to
Spitalfields
• By 1900 Jews are 95% of the
population in the Wentworth Street
district of Spitalfields
• As they grew wealthier, Jews moved
to suburbs like Golders Green and
Hendon
• Jewish
community
now almost
entirely gone
Jewish immigration:
seeking work and
asylum
• Jews – unlike Huguenots –
not warmly welcomed
• Jewish immigration
prompted first UK law
designed to limit
immigration: the Aliens Act
(1905)
• In 1930s: British Union of
Fascists (led by Oswald
Moseley) stoked antisemitic prejudice
• 1936: Battle of Cable Street:
• Anti-fascists fought the
Metropolitan Police
• The police wanted to
ensure that British Union
of Fascists could march
through the East End
• The protests led to the
march being called off
Bangladeshi immigration
• Immigrants from what is now
Bangladesh came to East London
as early as late 1600s
– Sailors (lascars) on East India
Company merchant ships
• Significant Bengali migration to
England from 1960s
• Migration driven by search for
work
• And for security: upheavals of
Partition in 1947 – creation of
Pakistan and India – and of 1971
war, which created Bangladesh
• Pakistan, and Bangladesh,
part of Commonwealth:
British Nationality Act
1947 gave
Commonwealth citizens
right of entry to UK
• Later acts restricted entry
Bangladeshi community
• Early arrivals mainly single
working men
• Joined later by families
• Many Bangladeshi
immigrants settled in and
around Brick Lane; as well
as to the east of the area
• Most originate from the
Sylhet region in north-east
Bangladesh
Bangladeshi community
• Size of Bangldeshi
community led to area
being named ‘Banglatown’
• 2001, 68 per cent of the
population of the
Spitalfields and
Banglatown ward was of
Bangladeshi origin
Bangladeshi community
• Migration from ‘New
Commonwealth’ countries (eg,
India, Bangladesh, Jamaica)
helped prompt restrictive
legislation:
– Eg, Immigration Act 1971
• Bangladeshi, and many other
‘New Commonwealth’
immigrants, in London and
elsewhere, have been the target
of racial prejudice and hostility
• The 1970s saw increasing attacks
by the far right National Front
One such attack
resulted in the
murder of Altab Ali
in 1978
The Truman Brewery
• Formerly the Black Eagle
brewery
• Brewing on this site began in
1666
• Huguenot immigrants made
a significant contribution to
the brewery:
– Helped create a popular
dark beer called porter
Anarchist immigrants to
the East End
• In 1898, Rudolf Rocker, a German nonJewish anarchist who settled in the East
End, became editor of the radical Yiddish
paper, Arbeter Fraynd (Worker's Friend)
• In 1886, the Russian anarchist Peter
Kropotkin, living in exile in Britain,
helped found the anarchist publisher
and bookshop, Freedom Press, just off
Whitechapel High St. It still operates
today.
Reflect on these questions:
• What have been the drivers of migration to the
Spitalfields area?
• What can the history of this area tell us about
how immigrants have ‘integrated’?
• How should development be understood now?
• In what way migration enhance development?
• Does East London represent a globalised world:
culture, economics and politics? If so, what are
the symbols or indicators of this globalised
world?